


Practice Makes Perfect

by ObscureReference



Series: Practice Makes Perfect [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 14:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5294927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObscureReference/pseuds/ObscureReference
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dex squinted at him. "Are you... offering to help?"</p><p>"I guess?" Chowder didn't sound too sure of it himself. "I mean, if you want help, sure. That's what friends are for!"</p><p>"Friends help each other kiss," Dex said dryly. </p><p>"Sure!" Chowder said. "Why not?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practice Makes Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how to write kissing, but here's some practice. Tell me if I did well or if it's just awkward and weird.

Dex opened Chowder's bedroom door without knocking. Chowder always left it unlocked if he was in, and he always told his friends to just walk in when they wanted. Well, here was Dex, walking in. He barely glanced around to make sure Chowder's roommate wasn't around before flopping onto Chowder's unoccupied bed. He almost wished he had slept at his own dorm before coming over, but he was too antsy to do that just yet.

"Dex?" Chowder said, scooting his chair back to get a better look at him. A textbook lay open on his desk, forgotten. "I thought you and Nursey were on a date?"

Dex huffed against Chowder's mattress. He turned his head so his cheek pressed against the sheets and Chowder could actually see his face. "We _did_ go on a date."

It had ended about fifteen minutes go actually, but Dex didn't feel like adding that part. The newness of it was still settling in his head.

"What happened?" Chowder asked. Dex muttered the answer into the sheets, too quiet for Chowder to hear. "What?"

"He tried to kiss me!"

It came out way too loud, but Chowder didn't comment on the noise. He only blinked in confusion.

"Oh," Chowder said. "I'm sorry?"

Dex snorted and rolled his eyes, but it was fond. He couldn't figure out how to phrase his thoughts just yet.

"If you didn't want to kiss just yet, that's fine," Chowder said, skipping over Dex's silence with assurances of his own. "It's not like you have to kiss right away or anything. I don't think Nursey would make a big deal about it."

Besides chirp Dex for life, no, he probably wouldn't pressure Dex into kissing if he didn't want to. But that wasn't the problem. 

"I _do_ want to kiss him," Dex said. God, how embarrassing was _that_ to admit? Dex almost wanted to crawl into a hole. If he had been speaking to anyone besides Chowder, he just might have. If he had been speaking to Nursey, he might as well have already moved across the nation and changed his name.

"Then why didn't you?" Chowder asked.

Dex didn't answer immediately. He rolled onto his back and stared at the off-white paint of Chowder's ceiling instead.

If admitting he wanted to kiss Nursey was bad, this part was near torture. It was honestly something from a C rated teen comedy. Dex grimaced.

"Because I haven't..." It was too embarrassing to admit. He couldn't do it. "You know."

"What?" Chowder said. Dex didn't look at him, but he could picture the way his eyebrows drew together and his face scrunched up in confusion. Then something clicked. "Oh! Wait, you've never kissed anybody before?"

"No," Dex admitted, still refusing to look away from the ceiling. "I haven't."

"Well, that's okay!" Chowder assured him. "Lots of people haven't kissed anybody before. That's _totally_ okay!"

Dex rolled his eyes. At least Chowder meant well. "Thanks."

"If you're that nervous about it, you could try talking to Nursey about it," Chowder said. When he saw the face Dex made, he continued, "Or you can practice with somebody before you do it for real."

Dex squinted at him. "Are you... offering to help?"

"I guess?" Chowder didn't sound too sure of it himself. "I mean, if you want help, sure. That's what friends are for!"

"Friends help each other kiss," Dex said dryly.

"Sure!" Chowder said. "Why not?"

Why not, indeed. Chowder was Dex's friend. He was kind, he wasn't bad looking, and he probably wouldn't say anything if Dex told him not to. Dex couldn't really think of a good reason why not.

"Okay," he said after a long moment. He drew in a deep breath. "Sure. Let's try it."

"Wait, really?"

Dex frowned. He sat up and placed his feet on the floor.

"What do you mean 'really?'" He asked, already feeling a tightness building between his shoulder blades. Chowder blinked.

"I just didn't expect you to agree so quickly."

"You're the one who suggested this!"

"I mean. Kind of, I guess."

Dex's face felt much too warm. He tensed and turned away. "If you don't want to, then forget about it! I thought you were offering!"

"I wasn't _not_ offering?"

"What are you _talking_ about?"

Chowder shook his head at Dex's exasperation. "If it'll make you feel better, then let's just practice! I don't mind if you don't."

"Fine!" Dex agreed, probably too roughly. "Let's just do it already!"

"Okay," Chowder said much more easily.

They both looked at each other. Dex sat on the bed and Chowder sat in the chair. Neither one moved.

Right. Practice. He'd never applied the word "practice" to anything off the ice before. Definitively nothing like _this_.

Dex swallowed. "Okay."

"Oh!" Chowder said suddenly. He stood up. "I guess, I should... yeah."

He crossed the space between them and sat on the bed next to Dex. Now that Chowder was a lot closer, what they were about to do was suddenly much more real. Dex ran his tongue over his lower lip.

"Alright," Chowder said. Dex was sure it was his best impression of a teacher's voice. "Kissing isn't that hard. Maybe Nursey will put his hand on your shoulder or something, but we don't have to do that if you don't want to. It's just good to know he might do that. Right now we can focus on the mouth stuff."

 _Mouth stuff_ , Dex thought to himself almost hysterically. He shook his head. "No, if we're going to do this, we might as well do it right."

"Really?" Chowder asked. Dex was sure Chowder tried to hide his surprise when he cleared his throat. It could only have been more mortifying if Dex were doing this with Nursey instead. He decided not to chirp Chowder and just be grateful.

Chowder raised his hand and placed it in the air above Dex's leg, letting it hover there until Dex nodded. Then he let it rest against Dex's knee. But nothing more.

"Is that okay?" Chowder asked.

Dex shrugged. "It's fine."

And it _was_ fine. Chowder's hand was warm on Dex's knee and he wasn't used to the feeling of anybody else's hand on his leg, but he grew used to the sensation after a few moments. It wasn't bad.

"Alright," Chowder said again. "Now for the actual kissing part."

He paused for a moment, fumbling with his words. Dex let him. After a beat, he continued.

"It's actually pretty hard to explain how to kiss. It's like. You just do it?" Chowder made a face at himself. "I don't actually think I can describe how to kiss properly, but I can try if you want?"

Nothing sounded more excruciating than listening to Chowder searching for a way to describe kissing in the most technical way he could, but Dex knew Chowder would try his best if he asked. Dex shook his head again.

"Let's just go for it," he said.

Chowder nodded. Suddenly he was leaning in and all Dex could think was _This is really happening_. Then their lips touched.

Chowder's lips were chapped, and Dex wondered how often Chowder had actually kissed somebody. Probably more than Dex, if the way he spoke was any indication, but Chowder had never mentioned going on dates in the past. Dex had never seen him hanging around a girl at school either. Maybe Chowder was actually the kind of guy to go on lots of dates and kiss every girl at the end, and he just didn't like to talk about it. Dex wouldn't have expected it, but apparently Chowder was some kind of kissing connoisseur. There were lots of things Dex suddenly didn't know about him.

The thought made Dex frown for reasons he couldn't pinpoint. He gripped Chowder's shoulder maybe a little harder than he should have and pressed his mouth against Chowder's maybe a little more than was proper. Chowder made a noise. He cupped Dex's cheek firmly with his free hand and pulled back just enough to speak.

"Slow down a bit, okay?" He said against Dex's mouth. His voice was quiet in the empty room, but it was all Dex could hear. His breath ghosted over Dex's cheek as he spoke.

"Sorry," Dex said, just as softly. Chowder leaned back in and Dex met him halfway.

He went slower this time, and even though he wasn't sure what he was doing, he tried his best to copy what Chowder did. He tilted his head a little more when their noses brushed, let his eyes fall shut when he saw Chowder had done the same. It wasn't terribly difficult.

At one point, Dex leaned in too much and his teeth clacked against the metal of Chowder's braces. He pulled back as soon as it happened, face on fire, apology on the tip of his tongue, but Chowder only laughed and pulled him back in. Chowder was so at ease, the tension bled out of Dex's shoulders instantly. Even with his lack of experience, kissing felt a lot better than he had imagined it would.

Dex was pretty sure intimate kissing involved using tongue at some point, but Chowder never brought it up and in return, neither did Dex. Instead they just slid their lips against each other's, and Dex let himself relax even further with the movement. He couldn't even feel Chowder's hand on his knee any more. It blended in with the rest of the give-and-take rhythm of their mouths.

The whole thing couldn't have lasted longer than 30 seconds, so Dex was a little reluctant to admit he was slightly out of breath when Chowder pulled back. He probably needed to work on the whole breathing while kissing thing a little more.

"That wasn't so bad," Chowder said with a grin. His face seemed to light up the room.

Any agreement, any _Yeah_ or _Yes_ or _Thank you_ , stuck in his throat. Rather than respond, Dex glanced at his phone. It was barely after nine o'clock, but still he said, "It's late."

That caught Chowder off guard. He blinked a few times in rapid succession before pulling his hand away from Dex's knee. Dex hadn't even realized it was still there.

"Oh, yeah," Chowder said. "I totally forgot. You're probably tired from your date still. I'm sorry."

He wasn't wrong, but that wasn't exactly why Dex was in such a hurry to leave. Dex fought against the urge to look at the floor as he stood up.

"It's fine," he said. "I was the one who asked, so. Thanks."

Chowder beamed. "It's no problem!"

God help him, Dex thought, Chowder probably meant it. He fumbled for the doorknob while staring at his shoes.

"Yeah, well. Goodnight."

"See you tomorrow!"

The click of the door shutting sounded too loud for the hallway. Dex winced. A guy wearing only a towel shot him a funny look before slipping into the bathroom. Dex pressed his lips together firmly and took off at maybe a faster pace than was normal, but nobody was there to call him out on it.

At least he had some experience now.

\----------

"And then he just, like, froze up and that made _me_ freeze up because maybe I was reading the signals wrong, you know? And then all of a sudden he was like 'Goodnight' and just ran inside like he couldn't get away fast enough. I thought we were having a great time. Like. Was I reading it wrong?"

Chowder hummed sympathetically, running his hands through Nursey's hair. His fingers caught on a curl or an especially tangled lock of hair every few seconds, and he used the time it took to free himself to come up with an answer that wasn't incredibly incriminating.

"Maybe he was just nervous," Chowder suggested. He didn't want to out Dex, but he couldn't help feel bad for Nursey as well. At a distance Nursey might have appeared at ease in Chowder's lap, allowing Chowder to run his fingers through his hair while he described his date the night before, but at the moment Nursey had the least amount of chill Chowder had ever witnessed.

A frown tugged at the corner of Nursey's lips. "Why would he be nervous? He didn't seem nervous when we were at dinner."

Chowder's heart felt heavy. Nursey hadn't exactly voiced his anxiety explicitly, but Chowder knew he'd been working up a way to successfully ask Dex out for weeks. When Dex had agreed, Nursey had been pretty ecstatic, albeit with same low-key front he always kept up. But now that Dex had run away at the end of the night, the real question on Nursey's mind was whether or not Dex regretted it.

The answer to that question was, of course, no. But Chowder had no way of saying that without breaking what confidentiality he held with Dex. It was the most rock and a hard place situation he'd ever been in.

Nursey and Dex were both great people when they weren't at each other's throats. He was sure they'd be happy together if they just learned how to communicate.

"Well," Chowder said, stretching out the word and looking for a good way to phrase his answer. He looked out the window above his bed as though it might hold a better solution. It didn't. "Maybe he just got nervous about kissing?"

Chowder internally cringed. He was sure he visually cringed as well, but Nursey, thankfully, wasn't looking at him. He was staring at the wall instead.

"Nervous about kissing?" Nursey repeated. "Why would he be nervous about kissing? This isn't the first grade. We're all big kids who've had their first kiss before."

Chowder shrugged and made a noise he hoped sounded like agreement. Nursey only frowned harder.

"Wait," Nursey said suddenly, sitting upright. The whole mattress shifted as he did, and the blood began rushing back to Chowder's legs as Nursey planted his feet on the floor. "Does Dex think I'm a bad kisser? Did he say something to you?"

"Uh," Chowder managed.

"It's fine," Nursey said, even though it didn't sound very fine. "You don't have to admit it. He probably did. That would be just like him."

Chowder patted Nursey on the shoulder. "I'm sure you're a great kisser," he assured him. "You've probably had lots of experience kissing people."

Not that, like, Nursey got around or anything. He hoped that wasn't what it sounded like. But Nursey seemed like the kind of guy who had been on at least a few dates in his lifetime. More than Chowder, at least.  

"Here and there," Nursey said. "I mean, it's been a while, yeah, but it's not like you forget that sort of thing. Right?"

"I don't know," Chowder admitted. He assumed not. He hadn't kissed very many people, but he thought he'd done an okay job with Dex the day before. He wasn't going to tell that to Nursey, however.

"He absolutely thinks I'm a bad kisser," Nursey mused, more to himself than Chowder. "He won't even kiss me because he think it'll be that terrible."

"I really don't think that's it," Chowder said, folding his legs beneath him. Nursey's shoulders sagged. It was a sore sight. "Maybe you should talk to Dex about it," he suggested.

"C, he would chirp me for life," Nursey said. He eyed Chowder. "Unlike some people."

There was a weird feeling in Chowder's stomach that said he knew where this was going. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

"You don't know until you try," Chowder said. "I mean, once you guys kiss, then there won't be any reason to be nervous. So once you get passed that, it should be smooth sailing."

"Right," Nursey agreed. "Unless it's a _bad_ kiss. Then it'll set the precedent for the whole relationship."

 _Relationship_. That meant Nursey was looking for something long-term. It made Chowder's heart flutter with happiness.

"Then make sure it's a good kiss," he said.

"Yeah, and to do that I'd need practice," Nursey said. "And the only person I'd want to practice with doesn't want to kiss me."

 _But he_ does _want to kiss you_ , Chowder couldn't say. This whole situation could've been avoided if Nursey and Dex just talked to each other, and now Chowder was stuck in the middle. He made a strangled noise in the back of his throat.

Nursey straightened up. He looked at Chowder and Chowder looked back. That weird feeling in Chowder's stomach got bigger.

"C," Nursey started. "I'm going to ask you the biggest favor ever, and it's cool if you say no, okay?"

"Uh," Chowder said again.

"Can we practice?" Nursey asked. "It's cool if you're not comfortable. I just don't want Dex to think I'm a bad kisser."

Yeah, this was exactly where he thought it was going.

"Sure?" It came out more question than answer. Chowder cleared his throat. "I mean, sure, that's fine."

It was fine, right? Chowder hoped so. Was that weird? Kissing Dex was one thing, but seemed different to kiss both Dex a _nd_ Nursey so they could feel better about kissing _each other_. But it wasn't like he suggested it this time either. He hoped it was fine.

Nursey raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah." Chowder's mind flashed back to the day before. "Why not?" It always came back to why not.

Nursey grinned. His teeth were very white, Chowder noticed, not for the first time.

"Why not?" Nursey repeated. Then he leaned in.

Kissing Nursey was different than kissing Dex, but not in a bad way. Where Dex had been clumsier and unsure, Nursey was smooth and at ease. Nursey was the kind of guy who was even chill about kissing, which wasn't surprising. The thought made Chowder grin into the kiss, and Nursey cupped his cheek as he did. His palm was warm against Chowder's face.

They moved gently at first, letting their lips slide together without any real urgency. It was almost relaxing, even. At least to Chowder.  Nursey's fingers absently tugged at the ends of Chowder's hair and Chowder found that he didn't mind at all. He could vaguely taste the strawberry chapstick Nursey had used earlier.

After about a minute, Nursey's tongue brushed against Chowder's lower lip and suddenly their kissing was a lot more open mouthed. Chowder felt his face warm up as he complied.

Kissing Nursey was more of a blur than anything else. A good blur. Where Dex had been about technique, Nursey, somehow, was more about feeling. Chowder was almost surprised when Nursey finally pulled back and he opened his eyes to find they were still in his bedroom. He had almost forgotten for a moment.

Nursey raised his eyebrows at him, and Chowder wiped some of the extra wetness from his lips with the back of his hand.

"So," Nursey said. "How was that?"

"Good!" Chowder said instantly. And then because maybe he responded a little too quickly, he added, "Dex will be totally impressed. You have nothing to worry about." Especially not if he kissed like that.

Nursey smiled, knocking his knuckles against Chowder's shoulder. "Thanks, man. I owe you one."

"It's totally cool," Chowder said, rubbing his arm absently. "Don't worry about it."

Nursey looked at him. He paused.

"Okay," Nursey said. "I know it's weird to just cut and run, but I'm kind of riding a high right now, so is it cool if I head out and prove to Dex that I'm a good kisser after all?"

Chowder laughed.

"Totally cool," He assured him. But Nursey didn't stand up immediately. First, he smiled again and reached over to tuck some hair behind Chowder's ear.

"You need a haircut," Nursey said.

Chowder tugged at a lock on the opposite side of his head. Yeah, it was getting pretty long. "I'll get it cut soon."

Nursey shrugged.

"It's not too bad like this," he said. Then he got to his feet. "Anyway, thanks again. I really appreciate it."

"No problem," Chowder said as Nursey walked out. The door closed behind him and the room felt oddly empty for once. Chowder frowned. He wasn't sure why.

Again, he wondered if it was weird that he had kissed both Nursey and Dex in the span of two days and thought maybe he should tell one of them. Then he shook his head.

Helping his friends kiss wasn't weird, Chowder thought. And it wouldn't be good to go behind Nursey's back and admit his fear to Dex, or vice versa. Friends helped each other. Kissing both of them just made him a really good friend.

Yeah. That was what friends did. Absolutely.

**Author's Note:**

> So the polyfrogs doesn't quite come in full circle, but maybe I'll write a follow up to this. I did get partway through writing a very awkward scene at the end of this involving the three of them at the Haus with everyone else and the exchanging of chapstick, but I decided to give up partway because I'm lazy. But maybe I'll continue it at some point. Or post it up by itself on my tumblr if I never finish.
> 
> Speaking of which, my tumblr is http://someobscurereference.tumblr.com/
> 
> Don't forget to leave a comment here, but totally feel free to hit me up there for whatever reason if the urge strikes you.


End file.
